{"id":25820,"date":"2021-02-02T03:24:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-02T07:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=25820"},"modified":"2025-10-03T11:08:29","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T15:08:29","slug":"building-strong-teams-at-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/building-strong-teams-at-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Building Strong Teams at Work: Put the Team First"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What’s the importance of building strong teams<\/a> at work? How can you do it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building strong teams at work is a critical part of Bill Campbell’s management philosophy. If you’re building strong teams at work, you need people that are committed to the team’s success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read on for more about building strong teams at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Editor\u2019s note: This article is part of\u00a0Shortform\u2019s guide to team-building<\/a>. If you like what you read here, there\u2019s plenty more to check out in the guide!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building Strong Teams at Work: Focus on the Whole Team<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Campbell believed you can\u2019t get anything done without a team, so the most important thing to look for in hiring people is a team-first attitude. The entire team’s success must be more important than any individual’s success. <\/strong>That’s critical for building strong teams at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chapter 4 outlines principles that can help you with building strong teams at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hire People Who Don’t Spell Team With an \u201cI\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The principle: <\/strong>People skills matter as much as technical skills. Most business people are familiar with the platitude that you should always hire people who are smarter than you, and Campbell believed it, too, but his criteria went farther than that. When hiring, Campbell looked for smart people who worked hard, had high integrity, would persevere even when faced with disaster, and most importantly, possessed a team-first attitude. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can’t have a team full of quarterbacks\u2014every team needs a diverse array of talents and abilities. Campbell said teams needed super-smart members but also people who were good at skills like empathy and communication. <\/strong>He called this \u201csmarts and hearts.\u201d He wasn’t overly concerned with experience or technical skills because he knew these could be developed. He hired people for potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Campbell paid attention to how existing managers and employees talked and acted. Did they say \u201cI\u201d a lot or did they say \u201cwe\u201d? Were they willing to make concessions? Did they get excited about other people’s successes? He championed the idea that it was a leader’s job to be an enthusiastic cheerleader. Campbell was famous for clapping loudly when someone finished a staff meeting presentation on a new project or a new idea. (One of the Google executives named this behavior \u201cBCC\u201d for \u201cthe Bill Campbell clap.\u201d New team members even practice it during orientation.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get the Right People to Tackle Each Problem<\/strong> When You’re Building Strong Teams at Work<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The principle: <\/strong>When faced with a problem, the first step is to ensure the right team<\/a> or individual is handling it. On the football field or basketball court, if you\u2019ve got the wrong player in the wrong position, the team can’t win. Campbell’s motto was \u201cwork the team, not the problem.\u201d Business leaders don’t need to be overly concerned about a problem’s nitty-gritty details as long as they have the right individual or team in place to solve the problem.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Example:<\/strong> In 2010, Steve Jobs of Apple believed that Google’s Android operating system was violating Apple’s iPhone patents. Apple sued the Android phone manufacturers, who were Google’s business partners. Even though Campbell was friends with players at both Apple and Google, he didn’t get involved in solving the conflict. Instead, he focused on putting the right player into action. He told Google’s CEO to utilize engineering chief Alan Eustace to negotiate with Apple. Eustace had the best skillset for the job. Because he was an engineer, he was able to get the engineers on both sides to talk to each other.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Shortform note: Eustace achieved much greater fame in October 2014 by jumping from a helium-filled balloon floating in the stratosphere. He holds the world’s highest freefall record at 135,899 feet.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Partner Up on Projects<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The principle: <\/strong>A strong leader will pair people up to work on projects or make decisions. These pairings enhance peer relationships and make the entire team stronger. When Campbell paired people up\u2014especially people who hadn’t worked together before\u2014he knew he was building alliances and trust within a team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Example:<\/strong> In 2008, Campbell asked Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice-president of products, to seek out Google’s new CFO Patrick Pichette and mentor him. This helped Pichette navigate his way around a new environment, but more importantly, it created a new pair of trusting teammates on CEO Schmidt’s team.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Partner\/Peer Feedback<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Because Campbell believed that peers were better at evaluating each other than managers were at evaluating their subordinates, he helped to develop a peer feedback survey at Google. The survey examined job performance, relationships with peer groups, leadership, innovation, and behavior at meetings.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Potential Survey Questions<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

In the last year, did this person:<\/p>\n\n\n\n